The Bigger the Fear and Despair...: Mayumi Lake and Stacia Yeapanis | January 16 - March 19, 2022
Mayumi Lake | Unison (Kaleidoscope), 2021, Pigment print on canvas, acrylic paint, PVC tape, metal, chain, ribbon, plastic, and thread, 84 x 24 x 24 inches
EXHIBITION DATES: January 16 – March 19, 2022
OPENING RECEPTION: Sunday, January 16th, 3-6pm
ARTISTS’ TALK: Saturday, January 22nd at 2pm (In-person and via Zoom)
Read the exhibition review by Annie Raab for Sixty Inches From Center
The Riverside Arts Center’s FlexSpace is pleased to present The Bigger the Fear and Despair…, a two-person exhibition by Mayumi Lake and Stacia Yeapanis. Each artist reflects upon personal experiences of coping with trauma and anxiety while creating their large colorful assemblages and installations.
Mayumi Lake’s “Unison” series stems from Housouge, colorful mythical Japanese flowers believed to bloom in the afterlife. Hers are created by meticulously cutting scanned vintage kimono patterns then incorporating toy parts, sequins, plastic flowers and other elements from her childhood in Japan with their references to American pop culture, into the creation of fantastic and vibrant hangings.
Stacia Yeapanis’ “The Bounty and Burden of Caretaking” began during a residency in Houston while tending to her aging cats, listening to the news, and living with Covid. Transforming the refuse of cat food and beverage containers with colorful embroidery allowed her artmaking to chronicle the care for her felines and herself. Yeapanis will be exhibiting several of her vivid installations created by her repetitive and meditative processes.
Stacia Yeapanis | Detail of The Bounty and Burden of Caretaking, 2021, Embroidered cat food cans and aluminum can tabs
Mayumi Lake is a Chicago-based artist, originally from Japan. Her installations, photography and video art have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Yoshinaga Gallery (New York), Chicago Artists Coalition, Witzenhausen Gallery (Netherlands), and Cornelius Pleser Galerie (Germany), as well as in numerous group exhibitions including Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), Carrie Secrist Gallery (Chicago), and Paci Contemporary (Italy). Lake is the recipient of several grants from Chicago’s DCASE, the Illinois Arts Council, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Residencies include The Chicago Artists’ Coalition Hatch and Bolt, Roger Brown, Skowhegan, and a residency in Krems, Austria. In addition, she has published two monographs from Nazraeli Press. Her art is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Asia Society, and Facebook. Lake holds an M.F.A and B.F.A. in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Mayumi Lake Artist statement:
Driven by my childhood fantasy, phobia, and desire, my artwork interacts with the ideas of time, memory, and floating between the real and imaginary.
I use photography to weave my autobiographical narrative - From the mimicry of prepubescent flesh surrounded by soft pastel clothing, emotionally-charged landscapes with a solitary girl soldier standing, and darkly illuminated and saturated stereotyped females; to bright and sparkly photo-sculptural mythical flowers. I also incorporate sculpture, sound, moving images, and installation to expand my narrative into more complex layers.
As a Japanese immigrant, my work is continually floating/shifting between states: East and West, longing and hope, memories and oblivion, and past and future. I am interested in archiving things that could be forgotten or become obsolete over time - otherwise I will forget where I came from. The awareness of the impermanence of things, or "Mono-No-Aware" in Japanese, has turned into an obsession and obligation to preserve the past as knowledge for the future. The idea of photography works very well to freeze and package the floating moments to archive them.
Although my obsession is rooted in a very personal narrative, I believe that the most personal is the most universal. In this way, I evoke emotional reactions from my viewers.
Unison project:
In Ancient Japan, when political chaos and a series of natural disasters occurred, the people believed the last days of this world were near. To calm their fear and despair, they filled sacred prayer sites with bright and bold images of mythical flowers, believed to bloom throughout the afterlife. Those flowers were called Housouge. The bigger the fear and despair, the more colorful and immense the flowers.
Unison is an ongoing sculptural photographic work, which features my interpretations of the mythical heavenly flowers or Housouge. The blossoms are constructed from motifs scanned directly from vintage girls’ kimonos. They are cut by hand and then reassembled, and include toy parts, plastic flowers, imitation gold, sequins, and various other objects that recall my own childhood in Japan which was saturated with objects that directly referenced American pop culture. The use of the kimono goes beyond being just a reference to my Japanese cultural heritage, it signifies a dying cultural tradition as the use of this traditional garb has all but disappeared and is relegated to a symbolic gesture reserved for special and rare occasions. Elements of the two opposing cultures are intertwined creating a strained and unique harmony illuminated through the constructed blossoms.
Stacia Yeapanis is a Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist, educator and writer. She explores the relationship between repetition, desire, suffering and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix videos, temporary collages and improvised, sculptural installations. Yeapanis is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at SAIC, where she earned her MFA in 2006 and won a Marion Kryczka Excellence in Teaching Award in 2020. Her first monograph was published jointly by Aperture and The Museum of Contemporary Photography in 2009. Yeapanis was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence and a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at Chicago Artists’ Coalition’s BOLT Residency. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018) and Kent State, Stark (North Canton, Ohio 2019), Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020) and Material Exhibitions (Chicago, 2021). Stacia was the Spring 2021 Artist-in-Residence at Zócalo Apartments in Houston, TX.
Stacia Yeapanis Artist Statement:
I began “The Bounty and the Burden of Caretaking” while in residence at Zócalo Apartments in Houston during the summer of 2021. I traveled across the country with my two aging cats, Gertie and Gloria, just as Covid vaccinations were being rolled out. It was (still is) a time of tremendous personal and collective anxiety. I listened to mounting reports of climate crisis weather and politics that don’t serve people, while managing my cats’ declining health.
Spurred on by the lack of recycling at Zócalo, I hand-embroidered the accumulating metal cat food cans daily in search of solace. I combined the beverage can tabs that resulted from my personal consumption with those of my neighbors in hanging garlands that clinked musically in the breeze.
Part hanging wind chime, part heavy chainmail shroud, part celebratory banner, “The Bounty and the Burden of Caretaking” uses the byproducts of consumption—most notably the cans that act as a tangible documentation of caring for my cats—as visible evidence of ongoing anxiety. The act of hand-embroidering sharp metal and giving new life to garbage is an act of solace seeking and transformation.
This piece was exhibited outdoors at Zócalo in numerous forms as it grew in scale and evolved in form. The modular parts of this changing installation were arranged and rearranged on the concrete ground of my patio and in the grass at the center of the apartment complex. They were hung from shepphard’s hooks around the property for multiple one-day installations.